Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!axion!tharr!altman
From: altman@tharr.UUCP (Hugo Fiennes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Which harddisk?
Message-ID: <1617@tharr.UUCP>
Date: 15 Jan 91 16:04:32 GMT
References: <1679@svin02.info.win.tue.nl>
Reply-To: altman@tharr.UUCP (Hugo Fiennes)
Organization: Power Microsystems Ltd
Lines: 25

Re: SCSI

8 bit SCSI is *not* slower than ST506, although Morley electronics might
want you to think so. 8-bit scsi can attain rates of about 650k/second
on a 48Mb drive, and upto about 700k/second on big drives (eg 100Mb).
It's not worth getting a 16-bit interface if you're not going to use
drives which go over 700k/second anyway - so 100Mb and under use 8-bit
or get a 16-bit card for future expansion! Note that 16 bit SCSI cards
will be external on the a3000.

(BTW: ST506 seems to hit about 400k/sec on a 60Mb drive)

The internal A3000 drive is an IDE driver (2.5") designed for laptops
and it runs off very little current on the +5v rail. Looking at the prices
of IDE drive/interface I would not recommend them (unless you *really*
want an internal drive) as with IDE you can (correct me if I'm wrong)
only have 2 devices, and you can't get interesting IDE devives, eg
optical disks, *big* hard drives, where as you can have 8 devices
on the SCSI bus, although no cards apart from ours support more than
4 hard drives. (when I say 8 devices I mean 7+scsi controller). It's
probably worth spending the little extra to get a SCSI interface.
Acorn's interface is very nice, but a tad expensive. Oak's is solid
and quick, but lacks things like background transfer.

Hugo